They annoy dogs, drivers and cyclists, and get in the way of pushchairs, wheelchairs and groups of people out for a stroll enjoying the weather. Who are they? Joggers, of course. And runners. Runners, however, hate joggers. ‘No, I am not a jogger,’ you will have heard, ‘I am a runner.’
The difference between joggers and runners is, I am told by a runner, the speed. My sense of it from listening to the interminable boring-on of both groups is that running is seen as some kind of romantic bid for freedom, whereas jogging is nothing but a slog to keep fit or lose the Chablis gut.
What I really love to see, when I awake at 7.30am after a terrible night’s sleep brought on by a crate of gin, hot curry and the trapped nerve in my back, is a smug tweet reading: ‘REALLY struggled to do 15km today. Don’t understand it.
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